S.F. State to mark 40th anniversary of strike

SAN FRANCISCO STATE / 40th Anniversary of Student Strike

Police guard the front of the library at San Francisco State University on December 3, 1968.

Police guard the front of the library at San Francisco State University on December 3, 1968.

Photo: Gordon Peters, The Chronicle

Photo: Gordon Peters, The Chronicle

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Police guard the front of the library at San Francisco State University on December 3, 1968.

Police guard the front of the library at San Francisco State University on December 3, 1968.

Photo: Gordon Peters, The Chronicle

S.F. State to mark 40th anniversary of strike

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For nearly five months in late 1968 and early 1969, near anarchy at San Francisco State played out on national television as police thumped striking students with batons and hundreds of students were arrested after throwing rocks and firebombs.

The strike, led by minority students angered by their lack of representation on campus, marked the most violent chapter in the campus' history, paving the way for student activism around racial issues across the nation. It also fueled the political career of campus president S.I. Hayakawa, who later was elected to the U.S. Senate.

This week, the campus is holding a series of academic discussions and cultural activities to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the strike.

Critics of the strike said some of its goals did not justify the violence. But ethnic studies experts and historians say it brought positive change to the university, particularly the creation of its College of Ethnic Studies, which includes Asian American Studies, Black Studies, La Raza Studies and Native American Studies.

The ethnic studies college now has nearly 50 tenure-track professors and 20 lecturers, and it is adding the study of Arabs and Muslim ethnicities as well as race and resistance studies.

Before the strike, the university occasionally offered a black music or black sociology class taught by part-time faculty, said Joseph White, who was dean of undergraduate studies and was faculty sponsor for the Black Student Union at the time.

"Black people were invisible in higher education in California," White said. "We were invisible on the faculty, in the curriculum and on the staff. And we were almost invisible in the student body."

The strike "changed the legacy of San Francisco State," White added. "It changed San Francisco State to a multicultural campus. Those ideas we fought so hard for now are a reality not only at San Francisco State University but all over the United States."

Following revolutions

Black students and the Third World Liberation Front were following revolutions in Africa, Latin America and Asia in leading the strike at what was then San Francisco State College.

On Nov. 6, 1968, they called for the closure of the campus until their demands were met, including the rehiring of Black Panther George Murray, a graduate student and instructor who was suspended after he urged black students to bring guns on campus.

But more significantly, the group, which included blacks, Latinos, whites and Asians, wanted a speedy establishment of a Third World college representing all ethnicities. They also wanted the admission of more black and other minority students.

UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Carlos Munoz Jr., who teaches a course on the civil rights movements of the 1960s, said the San Francisco State strike was for students of color the equivalent of the Free Speech Movement in the mid-1960s in Berkeley.

"It sort of brought the civil rights movements around the country to a more inclusive framework," Munoz said. "Jesse Jackson had not yet organized the Rainbow Coalition. What happened at State was the first large-scale multicultural effort and set the tone for that kind of rainbow politics."

When the strike began, most students went to class. But the strikers quickly spread chaos on the campus, banging on classroom doors and threatening to forcibly remove students and teachers if they did not leave. Strikers also cut electric cords on typewriters, telephones and copy machines in academic offices, while toilets and bathroom sinks were backed up and overflowed into hallways, said San Francisco State Professor Jason Ferreira, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the strike.

After a long weekend, campus President Robert Smith called in hundreds of police in full riot gear, and on Nov. 13, police showed up at a student gathering and began to arrest students and other participants, Ferreira said. In response, students began throwing rocks and the battle escalated until Smith decided to close the campus indefinitely.

Gov. Ronald Reagan and the California State University Board of Trustees ordered Smith to reopen the campus. He resigned instead and was replaced by Hayakawa, an English professor, who opened the campus Dec. 2 under a "state of emergency," with a ban on picketing, sound amplification or any other form of protest activity without administrative approval, Ferreira said.

The next day, which came to be known as "Bloody Tuesday," Hayakawa ordered police to remove strikers who had assembled. They chased students around campus, attacking them, Ferreira said.

Later, after a rally with prominent black leaders including Carleton Goodlett, editor of San Francisco's Sun Reporter, Democratic Assemblyman Willie Brown, Berkeley City Councilman Ron Dellums and the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church, police sealed off the central campus and began "indiscriminately" beating students, faculty, campus staff, community members, medics, photographers and even church officials, Ferreira said.

Pioneer in ethnic studies

Early in 1969, the university agreed to many of the student demands, including the establishment of the nation's first and only college of ethnic studies. The strike ended March 20.

Retired San Francisco police Lt. George Eimil, who was on campus with about 100 officers every day during the strike, was critical of the students' tactics.

"Did their 15 demands justify the bombings? Hell no," he said. "They placed a bomb in the administrative offices while school was in session. They were setting fires in the library. They were putting people's lives in serious danger."

But Laureen Chew, now associate dean of the College of Ethnic Studies and one of nearly 700 students jailed during the strike, said the battle was necessary. As an Asian American, she had faced racism in high school and from customers of her parents' laundry shop who called her father a "stupid Chinaman."

Her conservative parents did not know she was involved in the strike until she was arrested. She served 20 days in jail in connection with misdemeanor charges of disturbing the peace, illegal assembly and failing to disperse.

"You have to look at all the social justice agendas that have happened in the past 40 years," Chew said. "We were the first to put many of those on the agenda. You have to fight for those things to be included in the curriculum."

About 500 other colleges and universities have ethnic studies departments or programs, but San Francisco State University is the only one with a college of ethnic studies, said Larry Estrada, president of the National Association of Ethnic Studies and director of American Cultural Studies at Western Washington University.

Kenneth Monteiro, dean of San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies, said the strike is taught in the campus' courses on history, organizing and social justice. He said the strike was a key flash point among similar movements around the world.

"When you say Kent State, I think of anti-war protests. When you say free speech, I think of UC Berkeley. If you say multi-ethnic struggles, it is San Francisco State," Monteiro said. "This was one of the watershed events, that blast that opened the doors. It wasn't that the other struggles weren't important, but this was the Normandy."

If you go

Events marking the anniversary of the strike will be held from

8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and from 9 a.m.

to 4 p.m. Saturday. Registration and the full schedule of events and speakers is available at links.sfgate .com/ZFDY.